Michaela Gall took courses from the Chelsea School of Arts and the L’Ecoledes Beaux Arts in Paris to learn illustration. However, the idea did not appeal to her as it did when she enrolled for the three year course. Over the years, she experimented with different genres of art finally settling for pottery -- a form of art that is not too mainstream and by most is considered a less prestigious form of visual expression.

Sitting on the front porch of her friend’s house in a sweltering Lahore Gall talks about her journey as an artist -- of how the conventional and mainstream never appealed to her, which eventually prompted her to take up pottery. Her work in pottery is also different from what one would generally expect on decorative items -- from men with over bulging tummies to portraits of famous people. Her work has a twist to it, an eccentricity and freedom that she thinks goes hand in hand with the genre of pottery but is also a part of her own personality.

Settled in the UK, Gall mostly does commissioned work and has a exhibition coming up in October 2014 at the Marylebone in London organised by Made London, a design and craft fair.

The News on Sunday (TNS): Over the years you’ve settled for pottery, why is that?

Michaela Gall (MG): I went to Chelsea School of Arts and mostly painted when I was there but it was course on Illustration. Soon I decided I didn’t think it was right to illustrate someone’s text, didn’t want to sort of impinge on what someone else had written. I did a lot of icons; my work was influenced by them. I would call it semi-abstract work.

I was always very interested in the folk art side of things. I quite liked the local art and bringing that into my work. I was not working as a potter then, it was after that that I got trained with a potter.

I did classes for years and finally I bought the kiln and the wheel from my teacher and started doing shows in 2009 – 10. There is big freedom for me in making pots. I feel like I can interpret it which makes it playful and humorous. The 3D space gives you all sorts of ideas and references.

TNS: Pottery in Pakistan is seen as a very traditional thing. How does it fare in the west?

MG: In England, mostly, studio pottery is practiced. It is small production pottery. The strongest influence you see is from Japanese pottery which is probably because Bernard Leach the most sought after studio potter abd art teacher went to Japan and brought back techniques from a master potter called Shoji Hamada. So the Japanese aesthetic had a role in the whole shape and the glazes.

In London pottery has become very popular. A lot of people are working but it still doesn’t have the same status as you say installation art. There are one or two artists who work with big galleries but that’s very rare and you don’t get the same prices because there is still a craft kind of connotation to it.

I like it though because you can work with different elements.

Because of the 3D space you can show a landscape or a person like a Wonder Women series that I made. There is also a lack of seriousness attached to it to with painting I can get too worried but for me this is a sort of more playful genre.

Pottery is never considered as highly as painting because it has the idea that it is an object of utility. It’s called domestic work but great ceramics are every bit as good as painting when the form is beautiful and if the design and shape are working together.

I kind of like the throwing technique. There is a finite time when you throw because there is only so much water that you can put into it and I like the moment of distortion where you can sort of pull it into any shape, make it crooked or off centre; I like that sort of elasticity and flux. I’m not aiming for perfection you can buy that in Ikea.

That’s how Japanese ceramics have been interpreted, that perfect finish and the immaculate glaze. I feel that is boring. I like the sort of more human ceramic which has the print of the hand.

TNS: The first time you were in Pakistan was in 2001. Was that an interesting experience for you?

MG: Originally I did three exhibitions in Pakistan in 2001. My sister was working in Peshawar with Afghan refugees. The first exhibition was there. Shortly after I arrived in Peshawar the Buddha statutes (in Bamiyan Afghanistan) were blown up by the Taliban so I thought I would do a piece commemorating them. I wanted to do something ephemeral that would be destroyed as people walked on it but then it morphed into a protest piece. It was put on the side of Aide Medicale building in Peshawar.

It was huge scroll painting of Buddha. I did portraits and I did a piece on the things that refugees took with them when they left their country. That exhibition went to Islamabad, Hunerkada and then Lahore at the British Council. The Hunerkada was great; they wanted to show the Buddha which the British Council didn’t. The response was really good in Peshawar, a big section of people came and they were intrigued. It was more of an unusual thing there.

In the Islamabad show I also did a series of lotas, even the more decorated, silver ones that people pass down in generations. Although it was the plastic ones that intrigued me because you see them everywhere and they are kind of ugly but have beautiful translucent colours. Then everyone told me that lota also means like a political turncoat so I did one which had two spouting faces. That was very interesting.

That time I spent a good six months in Peshawar and left in September 2001. I haven’t been back to Pakistan properly since then, just been sort of passing through.

TNS: Within pottery what do you draw your inspiration from?

MG: I personally love the decorative aspect of pottery but I was drawn to the Islamic and Moorish roots of the ceramics so there is a fantastic museum in Barcelona which I think was the first time I came across this style. In southern Spain from the 7th and 8th century there is a lot of influence of the Moorish tradition and they are very simply decorated but very emotional somehow. They are very appealing with very few colours. I think it’s my love of pattern. Now I use the tradition to tell stories

Since I started, I’ve been drawn to Moorish tradition, using the glaze that I use which is a tin oxide glaze on red earthen ware. That’s why we call it tin glaze or mionica. Most of all I was attracted to the geometric patterns and the use of quite limited but very powerful oxides of cobalt and copper.

TNS: Your work is very different from what one would generally expect pottery to look like. It does have an aspect of illustration to it. What is your work usually based on thematically?

MG: The Frozen Ghosts collection, was based on inuit folk tales, there was a book called a kayak full of ghosts. The man who had written them had collected them from tribal elders which I don’t think had been written down before. They were all sort of cultural taboos -- don’t eat reindeer intestines, what not to eat when you are pregnant, women who married men with dogs heads and I sort of illustrated those; so I guess in a way I am working as an illustrator.

There was also the wonder Women series that I liked. .It portrayed women that were powerful and had an impact on society, Most of them were chosen by the girl who commissioned them but I chose some musical figures; I chose Nina Simone the singer. This was almost a year and a half ago.

Then there is a new one on powerful couples. And I quite like the Elizabethans. Their style is a lot like the work I do with decorative patterns, the not so good Elizabethan paintings are like it, with the faces sort of flat, so I copied that. I like the modern element, the banal with the esoteric. The point is to make you laugh really.